Classifications in child and adolescent psychiatry: A risky business?

Psychiatrists, like most physicians, are fascinated by their classifications. Like art critics that distinguish surrealists, cubists, hyperrealists, minimalists, etc. psychiatrists try to reveal patterns of symptoms, emotions or behaviors from the patients they see in their day-to-day practice. But psychiatric disorders are not used and determined only by psychiatrists. As pointed by P. Zachar (2015), psychiatric disorders can be considered as biological dysfunction, patterns of symptoms helpful for treatment and prognosis, categories used by health insurances, categories used by judges, words used in the media, concepts used by sociologists (“The weariness of the self”, Alain Eherenberg).We will discuss in the conference what science can say about this confusion and what clinicians should consider for their clinical practice.Disclosure of interestThe author has not supplied his declaration of competing interest.